Appendix A, which forms part of this disclosure and is incorporated by reference herein, is a microfiche appendix consisting of 2 sheets of microfiche having a total of 171 frames. This sheet of microfiche was submitted previously in connection with parent application Ser. No. 09/309,711 now Pat. No. 6,493,703 and is therefore publicly available from such file. Microfiche Appendix A is a list of computer programs and related data in an embodiment of the present invention, which is described more completely below.
The present invention relates to an online electronic message board system. The invention is especially suited for online services that require intelligent monitoring of subscriber tastes and interests so that relevant content can be located, extracted and presented in accordance with subscriber derived feedback information.
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the xerographic reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure in exactly the form it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
Online bulletin board systems (BBS) and discussion group boards are well-known in the art. Surprisingly, however, over the past 15 years or so they have failed to evolve significantly in sophistication and/or ease of use. In fact, compared to the developments made in applications software, user interfaces, internet browsers, etc., online message boards are still remarkably primitive. At this time, some popular stock discussion boards known to applicants are located on the internet at the following locations:
www.dejanews.com
messages.yahoo.com/index.html
boards.fool.com
www.techstocks.com
www.ragingbull.com
www.remarq.com
Of these, the fool.com board website maintained by an organization known as xe2x80x9cThe Motley Foolxe2x80x9d is probably the most technologically sophisticated and user-friendly. However, this message board, as with each of the boards above, is constricted by the fact that it relies on HTML coding, which, while easy to implement on the provider side, is relatively static, and not extremely functional from the user""s perspective. HTML is also easily handled by conventional user web browsers as well, and this is another reason why it is in widespread use.
A conventional prior art message board is illustrated in FIGS. 1A and 1B. As seen here, an interface 100 for an internet service provider permits the user to visualize a display area 110 which includes a number of posted messages 115 for a particular subject, which, in this case, involves company A. These posted messages are generated by users having access to the website maintained by the service provider, and can include information, commentary, etc., on any one of a variety of different subjects pertaining to company A, such as, for example, discussions of recent stock movements, products offered, press releases, etc. The users (subscribers) of the service provider compose these messages at their local computer systems, and then send (post) the same to a server at the website, where they are screened (usually for improper content), indexed (to identify topic, author, date, etc.) and stored for later retrieval by other users. Each message, therefore, is posted by a user-author within the logical area for Company A according to topic, and date, and such information is usually displayed in a region 115 of display area 110. A list of such messages, therefore, appears to the user when he/she visits the message board, and selects the logical area reserved for Company A. This list for Company A can be organized by topic, author, date, etc. by clicking an activation button associated with each of the labels xe2x80x9cTopic,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cAuthorxe2x80x9d and/or xe2x80x9cDate.xe2x80x9d An additional set of control buttons 125 can be used by the user to perform such functions as xe2x80x9cRequestxe2x80x9d xe2x80x94i.e., to retrieve the message highlighted by the cursor(the entry marked in shaded form), xe2x80x9cCreatexe2x80x9d xe2x80x94which allows the user to compose a new message for the topic in question, and xe2x80x9cFindxe2x80x9d xe2x80x94which allows the user to search the list of messages in the topic area for selected content. As seen further in FIG. 1b, when the user Requests a particular message, display area 110 is replaced by a different display area 130, which shows the user the message entry in question. At this point, the user can read the content of the message as provided in area 135, and can then respond to the same by activating a xe2x80x9cReplyxe2x80x9d button 140. This has the effect, of course, of posting yet another message under the topic in question, identified with an author name corresponding to the user.
This message board system, while commonly used in the industry, is not extremely functional or user friendly. First, from a high level perspective, when first visiting the message board, the user is presented with a first screen as seen in FIG. 1C which forces them to select from a broad area of subjects broken down as Company A, to Company B, Company C, etc. This means that a decision must be made by the user early on to narrow the focus of his/her query, and this restricts their later retrieval of relevant material that may be of interest to them. Accordingly, it is not extremely accurate or flexible, since the user must return to this first search staging area anytime they want to change subjects.
Second, assuming that the user is at the second stage of the prior art search interface shown in display area 110, and wants to examine a particular message, display area 110 vanishes from his/her view, so they are unable to jump to any other arbitrary selected message located within the topic area. Instead, the user is confined to moving through the messages (using interface 130, which is essentially yet a third stage of the interface) sequentially, typically using the xe2x80x9cPriorxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cNextxe2x80x9d buttons shown in area 140, which have the effect of moving backwards/forwards respectively through the list of messages for the topic. Since the display list of all the posted messages from the second stage is now out of sight, the user can experience significant frustration in trying to find another message that may have caught his/her attention during the time they were examining display area 110. The alternative, of course, is to close area 130 and return to the display area 110, and this option does allow the user to see the list again. This alternative is not attractive, however, since it requires additional keystrokes, and has the effect of now closing area 130 so it is no longer visible by the user.
In short, there is no easy way in the art to browse through messages on a bulletin board in random access fashion, or to see both a message list and content for a particular message at the same time. Also, the user must constantly transcend different stages of visual interfaces to move about during the search process, because such stages do not exist in any integrated, harmonized fashion.
Third, while the user is at the second stage of the search process, he/she is limited to seeing the messages in display area 110 as they are stored at the website; in other words, indexed by Topic, Author, Date, etc., but with no additional screening/filtering capability. This means that the user is sometimes (depending on popular the topic is) forced to browse through hundreds of messages (postings) to find an item of interest. While the prior art does allow some searching capability within this second stage, it is relatively primitive in that it cannot transcend the logical area bound by messages for Company A; in other words, it is not possible to search across all subjects for a keyword of interest. Again, this means that the user is not receiving complete information, and this detracts from the appeal of such system. Also, the search constructs possible with the prior system are very limited, and do not allow for advance filtering techniques, so that, for example, the user can use multiple filters to find content. For instance, locating postings by a specific author having specific keywords is not possible at this time. Moreover, within this second stage, the user must formulate and define his/her own search queries for each new query, and then pass this request to the service provider, where it is processed to return relevant hits to the user. This can take time, of course, and because this portion of the interface has no xe2x80x9cmemoryxe2x80x9d xe2x80x94in the sense of remembering the user""s predilections and search interests/constructsxe2x80x94the user is required to waste time each time he/she visits this stage to re-formulate the search query to retrieve messages of interest. It would be far more advantageous, for example, if the interface could learn, remember, and automate common query and filtering criteria from the user.
These and other noticeable limitations reduce the utility and utilization of message boards, and this in turn results in a number of adverse consequences for service providers, including fewer subscribers, reduced revenue, etc. These limitations, are due, in large part, to limitations in HTML, which do not provide for easy creation and manipulation of active display areas for the user. While other implementations of message boards might provide additional functionality beyond that described for the example above, applicants are nonetheless unaware of any message boards that provide flexible but comprehensive user selection of content.
Furthermore, while more advanced and useful interfaces exist for other applications, they have not been successfully adapted to date in connection with a message board system. For example, a conventional commercial news reader by Netscape is illustrated generally in FIG. 1D. This program has the advantage of a flexible interface for reviewing news stories, but does not provide any intelligent support for multiple levels of bulletin board message organization, message querying, etc. In other words, the content sources (on the left side of the screen) are simply newsgroups, which represent data that is in raw, unorganized and non-descriptive form as posted by various individuals within such newsgroups. The user is left to guess and wonder about the nature and scope of the various selections (newsgroups), and/or what subject matter, classes, sub-classes, etc., are within such selections. As the message items are created by individuals, it is often the case that these message items are not placed within an appropriate category (newsgroup), because the user does not have the time, interest or inclination to make certain that his/her message is placed in the right area for others to see it. Thus, the raw data examined by such interface is not intelligently created ab initio, and this means that it is not classified or managed (i.e. by subject matter/class, or in accordance with groupings that might be more germane to a particular community of users). This lack of organization in the content, of course, handicaps the functionality of the interface as well. Consequently, while this interface has some apparent advantages that could be imparted to bulletin board systems, it does not provide an optimal solution to the overall problem of identifying relevant content for a group of users, and then providing a tool for easily locating and browsing through such content.
Unlike most other application programs, most prior art online message boards have no flexible front end; thus, it is extremely difficult to identify, cull out and review large collections of unorganized messages. Moreover, the content presented at such sites, and the ways for presenting such content to subscribers, is left entirely to the discretion of the service provider. There is no effort made to intelligently monitor the needs, interests, etc., of the subscribers, and/or to find/tailor content (and/or its expression) based on such observations. Accordingly, such online message board systems do not truly or accurately reflect the needs, interests, etc., of its users, which reduces their appeal and attractiveness to users. This in turn means reduced advertising revenues and/or subscriber fees.
These limitations in prior art message boards have also inhibited true electronic xe2x80x9ccommunityxe2x80x9d based mass sharing and learning of information content. In other words, the apparent initial promise of the Internet to bring together thousands of users so that to they can collectively share information, opinions, insights, lessons, etc., has not been effectively realized to date. In large part this is due to a combination of factors, including the fact that information content from users and other sources is not created initially or maintained by service providers in a manner that makes it efficiently processable for user perusals. Even then, as noted above, retrieving this information in any intelligent fashion is stilted significantly by limitations in the search/retrieval interface engines of current bulletin board systems used by service providers. In short, there is an abundance of data online that would be of interest to broad classes of users, but no easy way to extract meaningful information, because it must be manually reviewed in inefficient ways. Accordingly, the creation of true collective intelligence electronic communities would be considerably enhances by a system that gathers and stores information from the community members automatically and intelligently, and then permits users in such community to be able to easily, flexibly and controllably glean and share selected insight from the experience, opinions, actions and facts from other users.
Tying all these factors together, it is apparent, too, that there is considerable need for an improved online service that integrates an intelligent data collection and indexing system with a more functional, easy to use front end interface for analyzing such data.
The present invention aims to provide a system and method for overcoming the aforementioned problems in the prior art.
One object of the present invention, therefore, is to provide a system and method for implementing an online data service that includes intelligent data content gathering, storage and retrieval, so that interests of subscribers of such data service are taken into consideration for purposes of building content, interfaces, or subject matter classifications used in such service;
A related object of the present invention is that such online data service be able to better provide a community of users with easier information extraction, so that users can filter, consolidate and learn from their collective experiences, knowledge and opinions of other community members;
A further object of the present invention is that such online data service be able to consider the previously defined interests of its members, or their status level within such community, while interacting with such users, so that such users are afforded treatment commensurate with their needs and standing in such community;
Yet another related object of the present invention is to provide an online data service which intelligently stores message content, and dynamically builds additional content of interest to the users of the same in the form of content subject matter groupings, classes and sub-classes, so that content query clusters are easily accessible and reviewable at any time by users without additional processing or time delays;
A still further related object is to provide capability for such online data service to collect, review and analyze posting and query entries by users, so that information from the same can be polled, tabulated, indexed and presented in forms that are of interest to the users of such online data service;
Another associated object of the present invention is to furnish an improved system and method for handling message traffic on an online bulletin board system;
A related object of the present invention is to provide users with an integrated and unified graphical interface for posting and retrieving messages from an online bulletin board system which interface is flexible and highly functional;
Still another related object of the present invention is to provide functionality in such graphical interface for permitting a user to view the aforementioned content query clusters, as well as other information tabulated by the online data service;
Yet another related object is to permit a user of an online service to interact with search robots located on an internet server to help formulate, execute and remember search queries of interest to such user.
A preferred message management system of the present invention can be used with an online electronic message board, and generally includes: a content sorting routine that runs on a computer associated with the message board system for sorting electronic messages and storing them such that they are searchable by users according to information categories. A second query handling routine also executing on this same computer is configured so that: (i) it can receive a user query initiated within a user query interface operating on the user""s computer system, and (ii) it can locate a selected set of electronic messages in response to the user query; and (iii) it can transmit such selected set of electronic messages to the user query routine interface in a form suitable for perceiving by the user. The query handling routine is preferably implemented as a set of community and customized search robots. Thus, for ease of searching, reviewing, etc., the message management system interacts with the user using only a single screen display portion of the user query interface.
As noted above, the user query is based on predefined query parameters available to all of the users within the user query interface, so that they correspond directly to the predefined information categories, and everyone using the message board can access such messages using community based robots. A user query can also be handled, however, when it is instead based on customized query parameters for a particular user, so that a customized search robot on the message management system is invoked for locating the relevant electronic messages. These latter types of electronic messages may or may not be made available to all users of the system, depending on the message board system provider""s preference.
A message posting routine receives and stores subscriber message data items.
These subscriber message data items are preferably coded so that they can also be classified and located based on predefined information categories.
In another aspect of this invention, the query handling routine automatically downloads those messages corresponding to information categories previously indicated as of most interest to the particular user. This can occur at the beginning of a session, or during idle periods, so that the user is given a faster response time for messages of interest to him/her.
A tracking system of the present invention monitors and analyzes message content traffic from the subscribers and other sources. For example, this routine preferably examines user query parameters, retrieved messages, user postings, retrieved content from off site locations, etc., This analysis can be used to tabulate data pertaining to frequency of information category usage, user author preferences, interface preferences, etc., and can be made available to the users of the message board. This information can also be used for automatically modifying the user interface on a periodic basis (to reflect common usage patterns) to improve the look and feel of the same, for determining new potential subject areas for content extraction, for adding/modifying new groups and/or classes for subscriber message data items, etc.
A content building system of the present invention operating on the message board system facilitates building a database of information items accessible by the online subscribers. In this system, a content extraction program locates and extracts selected information from one or more remote online network servers, based on search criteria specified by an operator of the message board system. A sorting program sorts the selected information, as well as subscriber messages, in accordance with a classification scheme, which is also specified by the operator. This results in a plurality of data files of sorted information items, each of the sorted information items being coded to fall within one or more categories of the classification scheme. Thereafter, information items can be located and reviewed by subscribers through subscriber queries performed in accordance with subscriber selected query parameters logically related to one or more categories of said classification scheme. A database management program integrates and storing the selected information and subscriber messages in conventional fashion.
Another aspect of this invention is that the search criterion and classification scheme are based in part on recommendations provided by the aforementioned message tracking system, or are automatically generated. A prioritization scheme for retrieving content is also preferably correlated with a frequency of occurrence of subject categories used in subscriber messages and/or subscriber queries, so that information for subject categories occurring more frequently is retrieved at a higher priority than information for subject categories occurring less frequently. In this manner, the system automatically builds content in proportion to subscriber popularity of such content, such that information for any particular type of content is retrieved at a rate proportional to such to subscriber popularity.
A preferred embodiment of an electronic message board system for use by a community of users includes the aforementioned routines of the message management system, tracking system, and content building systems. Such message board system preferably monitors the interests of its users, so that content extraction decisions, content extraction scheduling decisions, message classifications, and interfaces are continuously modified or tuned to reflect feedback gleaned from studying such preferences. In another variation of the invention, user requests (queries, postings, etc.) are prioritized based on status levels of the users.
The methods practiced by the aforementioned message management system, tracking system, content building system and electronic message board system represent other useful aspects of the present inventions that can be employed advantageously in connection with a online message board, and are further described herein.
Although the invention is described below in a preferred embodiment associated with an online bulletin board system dedicated primarily to business information for trading financial instruments, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the present invention would be beneficially used in many other applications where it is desirable to provide users with a fast, easy, and comprehensive system that minimizes burden on a user searching for relevant data content.